


Childhood

by 8The_Great_Perhaps8



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Extended Metaphors, Gen, extended metaphors everywhere, theres just gonna be a shitton of references to kingdoms and the like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-02
Updated: 2014-10-02
Packaged: 2018-02-19 13:44:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2390513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8The_Great_Perhaps8/pseuds/8The_Great_Perhaps8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Childhood is a kingdom where nobody dies, and they all must have done horrible things indeed to be expelled from such a utopian place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Childhood

*  
He is Dave Strider, and his kingdom of childhood was always bombarded by swordsmen and vile puppets and the constant cuts and nicks and bruises different from other children his age. No one died in that kingdom, sure, but people ached and bled and hurt. It’s hurt for as long as he can remember, but at least in his kingdom he had someone who was always ready to fix him up, holding band-aids as readily and surely a doctor holds a scalpel. But the last person to heal him is the one who left his kingdom of childhood in ruins.  
*  
He is John Egbert, and his kingdom of childhood lasted longer than others’ did, he thinks. His was a golden kingdom of jokes and baking and pranks, and it was wonderful while it lasted.  
He didn’t appreciate it, of course-he hated being trapped (trapped, he scoffs now) in the happy kingdom, abhorred the practical jokes and ceaseless brightness. He misses it now, but his kingdom lays in the past, where not even the wind can reach it, and so he destroys in his memories. He adds hatred to pure memories, adds disgust to even the most innocent of tasks. His kingdom is gone, he decides, so there’s no use in remembering it well.  
*  
She is Jade Harley, and her kingdom of childhood was set on fire and burned to the ground when she was but three years old. She spent her life living between the tower of a crumbling castle and the golden spires of her dreams. Her crumbling castle of waking hours was her making and her undoing, as it ended, and her guardian was the beginning and ending of it all as well. Her memories of her conscious kingdom is always tainted at the edges with the sounds of gunshots and fleeing prey. Even before her kingdom was decimated, a war was raged between the hunter and the hunted.  
*  
She is Rose Lalonde, and her kingdom of childhood reeks of alcohol and blood and almost never enough attention for her far-reaching ambitions. Her juvenile empire was hard run and worked to the bone, and she had too many responsibilities for a girl who should’ve been being treated like a princess. Her realm was a shadowy place constantly entangled in darkness and ghosts of cats who disappeared quickly and came back dead. She was just a girl who was trying too hard to grow up and get away from the darkness and shades of her life, and was too busy being too old for her age to notice her mother trying desperately to replenish her daughter’s dark dominion.  
*  
He is Karkat Vantas, and his kingdom of childhood was always under threat of discovery. He built fortifications of gray and anger, hiding behind anonymity and rage to keep himself safe. He was always trying to lead it to bigger and better things, always trying to be in charge from the moment he first cut himself on his sickles and his custodian didn’t let him outside for a week. He wouldn’t let anything stop him, until he realized that he was no longer protected by the ignorance of youth and his kingdom crumbled down around him, gold and brown and blue and green and cerulean and fuschia and jade and violet drip drip dripping down the walls, and he saw red.  
*  
She is Aradia Megido, and her kingdom of childhood was destroyed in an inferno of blue and red, stomped to the ground, and coated with gasoline so that it could never be rebuilt. Even before that, she remembers, the dead whispered at the edge of her kingdom, begging her for something, anything, begging her to step out of her lovely castle and join them as they jostled at her mind. Her kingdom was deathly and morbid before death had reared its ugly head and she knew that her friends’ kingdoms were going to be destroyed, too. She thought she was okay with that, though.   
She never warned them.  
*  
He is Tavros Nitram, and his kingdom of childhood was all about freedom and flight, before it was knocked to the ground and he could fly no more. His kingdom became half dead, less bright and cheery and more and more gray and uncaring, and the animals suffered for it. It faded when his first friend died and it crumbled to ash when he killed his guardian and that ash was spread out with the nearly final breath of the ceruleanblood. He had nothing left to lose when he decided that she had gotten too dangerous, and he felt no guilt when he picked up his lance and went to meet the spider, and his kingdom was destroyed anyway. He was finally free.  
*  
He is Sollux Captor, and his kingdom of childhood is marred by twin scars of blue and red and screams of doom and howls of warning. His kingdom was constantly fluctuating between yes and no, good and bad, purple and gold and red and blue and any other contradiction you can think of. His dreams were doubled and so was vision after he woke, but it didn’t last long, once he heard the entire population of his planet join his chorus of pointless deaths. Once he heard himself screeching against death, and how even after the voices had finally been silenced, how he could hear his voice whispering again and his friends whispering and hissing through his head. They’d been doomed from the start.  
*  
She is Nepeta Leijon, and her kingdom of childhood began crumbling when she began to hunt for her own food, though she hardly noticed. Her kingdom was rebuilt with the scribblings of child, drawn in blood, but viewed like watercolors, and the kitten began to learn that death was what let her live. This was a simple truth, one that she knew not to question for fear of the unknown. She wasn’t one to go searching through the void. This kitten liked to know what was around her and she liked to be able to touch it to keep her grounded. She had the heart of a warrior, and had a roguish streak a mile wide and she knew that her and her moirail had been made for each other, and she was familiar enough death to recognize it in her moirail and she had the catlike reflexes to spring on his attacker, until the green paint started dripping out of her head.  
*  
She is Kanaya Maryam, and she was not so much the monarch of her childhood kingdom as she was the governor, or perhaps an imperial officer of some kind. The executor of her domain was an all-seeing man who was simply the best there was at awakening hidden potential. He put her to sleep one day and gave her the chance to wake up in an amber kingdom where she truly was a princess, but she returned each day to tend to her flowers and to practice her sewing. She spoke to the all-seeing man until she met her friends and he disappeared as though he had never shown her to her royal golden perch. Darling Kanaya, dearest Bloody Mary, there is no sun nor blood for you to feast on here.  
*  
She is Terezi Pyrope, and her kingdom of childhood is blurred and unseeable, interchangeably, in her memories. It is towering and golden and bright and colorful and shining, and it is in ruins and dank and dark and bleak and dreary, all at once, as though her eyes can’t quite decide how it fell apart. Her kingdom had died slowest of them all, dripping into nothingness with each new death, and heaving back into life with each resurrection. It was nearly all drained away by the cycle of revenge which had nearly drip, drip, dripped it all into the sewers, but then Aradia had come back, and Vriska had nearly died, and both of them came back better than before, and some her domain which had dripped away, drip, drip, dripped its way back. But she was a prosecutor, and the thief’s case was utterly hopeless.  
*  
She is Vriska Serket, and her kingdom of childhood was swallowed down her mother’s gullet faster than you can say “Please, stop”. It has chunks bitten and torn out of it, and its dyed cerulean-teal-green-yellow-brown-rust all drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip-drip dripping down the walls, and she hasn’t been in her kingdom so long the spiders are spinning webs in her eyes. She was such an unlucky child, her arm chomped off and her eye blowing up, and poor poor Pupa who never got to fly. She tried to light the way for her friends so many times, tried to make Pupa fly and make him happy, tried to make her stupid happy friends with their stupid happy lusii see how hungry her lusus was, but they never believed her. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, after all.  
*  
He is Equius Zahhak, and his kingdom of childhood was heavy and gray with responsibility, but he had always been a strong boy. He had to know his place on the hemospectrum and he had to know all his friends’ places too, since they seemed so dedicated to forgetting. His childhood was all about practice, memory, obedience, and exercise. He was almost breathless, doing push-ups until it seemed that his lungs were void of air and his bloodpusher would give out. His heart always had been a rogue thing, stealing away diamonds while begging for rust encased in blue, and he was never one to disobey, and the first time he disobeyed his custodian had ended up dead and his weighty kingdom had cracked in two. But the next time he obeyed, he ended up choking on his words.  
*  
He is Gamzee Makara, and his kingdom of childhood is neon green and interspersed with fumes and hallucinations from drugging himself to hell and back. He was lonely and sad and didn’t know better about anything, it could be argued, but his outrageous drug-induced fits were more difficult to explain away. His kingdom was precarious even without the sopor pies, perched as it was on the precipice of the ocean and the seadwellers, widely known for their dislike of the landdwellers, so his kingdom is guarded by the dark powers of the chucklevoodoos, and make no mistake they are power and danger and shrouded in shadow. His kingdom was dangerously close to toppling into the icy depths and drowning as it came apart, but it never did end up happening that way. Instead, as soon as his kingdom was revealed without its drug-induced hazes and little white lies, he found that he didn’t quite like it as much as he thought he did, so he tore it apart, brick by brick.  
*  
His name is Eridan Ampora, and he knew well enough that kingdoms of children where death didn’t exist were merely paltry tales, so he never did take the time to indulge in them. He was busy becoming the Orphaner, aiming and lining up the shot and shooting until the murmurs were quieted. He knew well enough the destruction he was wreaking, killing lusii and in that killing their grubs as well. Despite his frank experience with death (and his manipulation of it, too), he had built himself a little shed to protect himself from the death of anyone that he actually gave a flip about. Death was a tool, he told himself, and it was a tool he used liberally. An angel of death, the poor violet prince was. He was only doing his job, he told himself.  
And then he blasted his poor little shed of childhood to smithereens.  
*  
Her name is Feferi Peixes, and her queendom of childhood was unsteady at best, quaking at worst. The slightest murmur sent the young princess’ castle quivering until dinner arrived. Despite the unsteadiness of her queendom, hers was one of kindness of compassion, which was for everyone’s own good. She was a good, kind person, she figured, and she knew that sometimes she had to do things for others’ own good. People rarely seem to realize how much better things could be for them until you offered them something different, she knew from experience. Playing the game was the best thing that ever happened to her, now that Mother’s voice has finally ceased. She was only just free when her queendom was killed by a jealous prince.


End file.
